Amishenanigans - Deadly Blessing Review

Stacie at Final Girl has chosen Wes Craven's 1981 shocker Deadly Blessing as her Film Club pick this month, so let's get to it.

This came out during the dawn of the slasher era, but I was still too young to gain access to R-rated movies, so I had to rely on my friends' older siblings' opinions to find out just how badly I was missing out. In this case, the verdict was pretty dire. "It sucked." said the jaded senior-high set. Shamefully, I trusted this assessment so implicitly, that I'd never bother to track the movie down and judge it for myself. The gospel of the roller-rinkers had been set down, and like an unquestioning buggy-riding bumpkin, I SHUNNED THIS MOVIE.

Too bad, because it's actually the shit. You've got Oscar-winners acting badly,bankable television stars acting like lunatics, and a young, cherubic Sharon Stone acting like, well, nowadays Sharon Stone. Add in a dash of gratuitous cheesecake and the stage should be set for a campy cult classic, right? Well, not at first. For the first hour, Deadly Blessing feeds us a few animal-icks, and one really good jump-scare, but overall, the buildup is awfully light on tension.

BUT!!! Then comes the final half hour and HOLY CRAP does the (S)hittite ever hit the fan.

Menacing Van Art!

Crushing backhands!

Blazing gunplay!

Lamps! Bedposts! Shotguns!

Mace in the FACE!

What IN HELL. This movie should be famous for its last act. I won't spoil it, but imagine cramming Charlie's Angels, The Dark Secret of Harvest Home, Sleepaway Camp, and Little House on the Prairie into a Moulinex and leaving it on purée for ten minutes. That's the flavor you'll end up with. Maybe it's not to everyone's taste, but I frankly ate that shit up. Thanks, Final Girl. I have seen the deadly, blessed light.

The Hellbound Fart

You all know Stacie Ponder from Final Girl, don't you? Her Film Club is the cat's pajamas. The lady has an unerring sense of taste, an uncanny nose for schlock, and a unique gift for picking just the right horror flicks month after month.

So I'm giving her a pass on this one, and instead blaming the disgustingly apocalyptic heat.

Because this:


WAS AWFUL!

Hellbound ( 1984 )(1994) is a Chuck Norris movie. It's a movie where Chuck Norris out-woodens the clapboard sets with his acting, where the less-than-unknown supporting cast makes you wonder if they weren't hired purely out of charity, and where any redeeming cheese factor is blighted by the fair-to-middling competence of the direction and cinematography.

This thing is just tedious. But since this is supposed to be a review instead of a heatstroke-fueled grouse, here's the rundown: Chuck portrays a Chicago detective nonsensically named Sgt. Frank Shatter. Presumably Frank Shatter is a moniker designed to confer an acuity for shattering bones, but in my estimation it's what you call a guy who quite frankly shits his pants in the past tense.


Voluminously beshatted and stratospherically waisted PANTS!

To digress just a bit - I just fucking don't get Chuck Norris, I never have. Ok, he's believable as a diminutive bearded fellow with a penchant for flailing about with his lower limbs, but hell, SO WAS MICHAEL FLATLEY back in the day. The guy's head is 30% larger than it ought to be, his shoulders seem scarcely broad enough to support even a normal-sized noggin, and his trunk and musculature befit an octogenarian (funny enough, I liked "The Octagon"). He's never managed charisma or gravitas in any of his roles, and it just amazes me how he acquired this nutty fanbase that somehow sees a badass under that baby beard and those birthing hips.

Ugh. So, it's time to wrap this up - the thermometer's climbing. Chuck Norris and his embarrassing stereotype of a black sidekick are on the hunt for a Satanic toady with ridiculous hair (actually, he's in good company) who wants to gather the pieces of a broken sceptre and raise the Devil. They end up in Israel (because production decided it was cheaper than Iraq, I guess?) and archaeology happens, and the devil dude with the wacky gurning and basso profundo dubbing, and then Chuck + roundhouse kick, + roundhouse kick = THE END.


So much bad hair.


So much bad acting (and obviously, hair).


Let's not and say we did.

This godawful shitpile is worse than all the worst parts of Dead Heat, Lethal Weapon, End of Days and Sister Act and right now I'm so hot and sticky I could cry.


My soiled diapers are still more slimming than Chuck Norris' slacks.